Memorial
by CelestiaTrollworth
Summary: In Remembrance, 2017 Gene Roddenberry flew 89 combat missions, James Doohan was wounded fling over Normandy on D-Day (did anyone else notice the missing finger on his right hand that was one of his wounds?) and Mark Lenard trained as a paratrooper, but was severely injured just before D-Day. In honor of all the veterans who have gone before...


The sand was not red. Here, the night wind barely ruffled the desert and no brooding Seleya glowed above the city. The monument was not the weatherbeaten heap of barely cut red sandstone, long devoid of lettering or even most of its detail. The new one was hardened granite, quarried nearby on this milder planet with its kinder habits. It still mattered.

The stop at New Vulcan had been Spock's idea. One resupply planet served as well as another, so far as Starfleet was concerned; if the informal shakedown cruise had been shaped so as to put them nearest to 3 Vaebn when the schedule called for a stop, no one cared.

Kirk had no doubt about where to find him near midnight; hadn't they been in this place a year ago, and hadn't they stood shoulder to shoulder then as well? The new dress uniforms were much more comfortable, more suitable for standing at attention. He turned the corner toward the monument, expecting to find Spock alone there.

He was not. There was a small crowd, mostly civilian, and a thin line of military personnel and veterans of all ages in front. Most were Vulcan Navy, some in modern uniforms, some in very old attire. A few were under arms; he recognized them as the pioneers who had armed themselves when the Romulan Empire had attacked. They knew him, as well, and unlike most Vulcans, nodded to him in recognition. Quiet verbal greetings became the order of the night. Most of the women were heavily pregnant now. The young ShiKahri sniper who had been so brave murmured "I do not believe I could lie in the proper position to carry out that mission again, were it needful."

"May it never be again," he agreed, looking at the elegant script on the stones. "I can't read it."

"Surak. 'Life must rise, even in the midst of death; peace must rise of war's ashes.' Beneath it is written 'For those who gave their lives in our defense.'"

He looked around in what he hoped was muted surprise. More and more people were walking up, nearly all of the original two thousand settlers and a few more. They arranged themselves by some system they all understood. One of the civilians nodded politely and lowered her voice. "Captain, Commander Spock is at the front left of that line. I believe he has kept your place."

He had. On his other side, his kinsman Ruven, in theory a merchant marine captain and in truth something else entirely, stood in his black uniform. A few elders approached. The admiral, her husband and children followed, taking up the spots to Kirk's right so he was sandwiched by Spock's family. The message was clear enough: _he is ours and he belongs_.

In the distance, a soft gong sounded from the temple on the hill south of the city. Vulcans had not needed clocks on T'Khasi, but the new world was more difficult for their sense of time. The admiral stepped forward, kindled a spark and lit a small pile of coals, then sprinkled a handful of what Kirk recognized as the formal government incense. Personal scents were one thing, the public ceremonial resin another. Once she was sure of the smoke, she looked down at her padd and began to read, quietly but rapidly: "S'Kel Mijne. S'chnT'gai T'Jhu. T'Khai Joren. Kril'es T'Rouf..."

Her big gruff husband bowed his head and began to recite. "S'Kel Mikel. S'Kel Jhan..."

Kirk realized everyone in the group was saying names, not the same ones but a gentle murmuring catalog that went on and on. The realization was a fist in the gut, but he began to recite as well: "George Kirk. Christopher Pike..." He tried to picture the faces and add the names of the cadets he had known who bounded aboard those doomed ships so full of enthusiasm. When he could remember no more, some impulse made him add the Kirks who had died in the second world war, the one who had gone down with flu in 1918, the Sixteenth Iowa during the American Civil War. There was the great-grandfather who had tried to stand off the Augments and the grandparents who had tried to defy Kodos, and he spoke their names aloud because everyone else had a list.

The gathering concluded after an hour, when the admiral looked around respectfully, made sure everyone else was finished, and added "...and all the others whose names we do not yet know, until we know them and speak them here for their remembrance." She added a tiny pinch of incense from the pocket of her robe, and her husband followed after them, elders, current military and anyone else who wanted to come by did the same, adding a few grains until there was a strange but sweet blend of scents rising. Different, but in harmony? Gone, like smoke? He could have taken it several ways. He chose to think of Chris and his father when he added a pinch of pocket lint because it was all he had.

As they began to walk away, and he found himself walking with Spock as a matter of course, he also found Sarek in their group, silent, eyes on the sand. Spock looked up at him out of the corner of his eye. "Your offer was as valid as theirs."

"Perhaps," Sarek said. "I was unsure as to my presence here."

"It is welcome. You know it should be."

He glanced back at the admiral, who had been detained by an elder. "When I was eighteen, it seemed entirely possible that I would be permitted to join the peacekeeping force. Later, when I bade them farewell as they went to do what I should have been doing, it was also difficult to admit that my presence would have been a hindrance."

"Father overcame the early health objections but was injured in training," Spock explained. "Not of his own fault. A shuttle crash."

"What you managed will suffice," Kirk said. "We do not choose the outcome of our missions, nor even whether we will complete them. The intent and the effort matter."

Ruven fell in with them. "Wasn't that what tonight was about?"

Sarek lifted his head, looking off toward D'H'Riset. "It was," he said.

Kirk decided not to ask who Sarek's incense had been for. There were more than enough names to account for it.


End file.
